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coozy17
Participant
August 16, 2017
Question

Creative Cloud & MacBook Air

  • August 16, 2017
  • 2 replies
  • 4888 views

After some research I've read that the MacBook Air barely has enough power to run Premiere and AE. I need a laptop to use on the road a couple times throughout the year so whatever I buy wouldn't be my daily driver, I have a Mac Pro in my office. Given the following stats of the 2015 Air I'd like some opinions as to whether or not it'll serve me well:

  • 1.6 GHz Intel Core i5 (Broadwell)
  • 8GB of 1600 MHz LPDDR3 RAM
  • 256GB PCIe-Based Flash Storage
  • Integrated Intel HD Graphics 6000

If any of those specs are lacking which need the most improvement? Thanks for your help!

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1128913-REG/apple_z0rj_mjvg2_13_3_macbook_air_notebook.html

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    2 replies

    R
    RjL190365
    Legend
    August 16, 2017

    There are several problems with that MacBook Air:

    1) The CPU has only two physical cores (albeit hyperthreadable), and its base clock speed is too low to handle this CPU-intensive program (I'm talking about the latest version of Premiere Pro);

    2) 8GB total of RAM is the absolute minimum amount of RAM required to even run Premiere Pro at all;

    3) There is absolutely no discrete GPU at all on that MacBook Air.

    What this means is that the MacBook Air performs significantly slower than a properly configured laptop with a true quad-core CPU (all mobile i5 CPUs of the Broadwell and earlier generations are only dual-core). The lack of sufficient RAM may semi-permanently lock Premiere Pro to the MPE software-only mode, especially since that MacBook Air has only integrated on-CPU-package graphics that steal some of the MacBook Air's paltry amount of RAM. And no integrated graphics solution performs as fast as even a mediocre mid-level discrete GPU, when utilizing MPE GPU acceleration.

    Lastly, you will need an external USB 3.0 (likely USB-C) drive to do much of anything in Premiere Pro, which has been proven to croak on systems equipped with only a single disk such as most laptops.

    Kanikas
    Community Manager
    KanikasCommunity Manager
    Community Manager
    August 16, 2017

    Moving to Hardware Forum​

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